La Jolla’s fabled Salk Institute says its in great financial shape. Just two years ago, it raised a record $361 million in private donations — far exceeding its goal.

But a short time later, the Salk noted in private documents that it still faces “daunting” money issues that come as it tries to preserve the singular approach it takes to studying human disease.

Like other biomedical research institutes, the Salk is under great pressure to develop discoveries to the point where they will attract big money from drug companies, the government and appreciative donors.

The people who underwrite science say scientists can and must speed up the process of finding ways to alleviate suffering.

The 57-year-old Salk has long preferred to focus on more basic questions about how and why disease occurs — work that has aided in the creation of such cancer drugs as Gleevec and Iressa. It’s painstaking research that doesn’t always have a clear payoff, and can make it hard to compete for money.

The challenge comes as the Salk is coping with the fallout from three of its female professors filing lawsuits that accuse the institute of gender discrimination. The suits, filed in July, say the Salk favors men when it comes to pay, promotions, grants and leadership opportunities.

The allegations have been staunchly denied by Salk President Elizabeth Blackburn, a Nobel laureate.

Waitt played a key role in helping the Salk raise $361 million in private donations during a capital campaign that ended in 2015. His announcement came a day before the institute holds Symphony for Salk, a community-building concert held every August.

There’s broad agreement that the Salk, which is determined to remain small, needs to raise a lot more money for everything from recruiting faculty to buying pricey scientific equipment.

“Despite the success of the recent capital campaign, there are significant and daunting financial challenges facing the institute, many which need to be addressed through increased private philanthropy,” the Salk says in internal documents obtained by the Union-Tribune.

The documents also show that, over the past couple of years, the Salk has considered a number of provocative ideas for dealing with the issue, including:

Attempting to raise $100 million in endowment funds during a one-year, one-time campaign.

Affiliating with a private hospital that is willing to distribute profits to the Salk in exchange for earning nonprofit status.

Exploring whether the institute would be willing to alter its official name if a private donor was willing to make a contribution upward of $1 billion. Such a gift is not imminent, and the idea could stir objections from admirers of the late Jonas Salk, who founded the institute after developing the first effective vaccine against polio.

Making Salk research more attractive to drug companies, especially in such hot fields as cancer immunotherapy and mental health.

Recruiting more mid-career faculty who have a record of obtaining big grants from the National Institutes of Health, the largest public underwriter of biomedical research. The Salk’s NIH funding has plummeted in recent years.

Hiring a major celebrity to raise big donations, particularly from people aged 30-50. The documents say the institute must get past is heavy reliance on older donors.

The Salk told the Union-Tribune on Thursday, ”The document leaked to you includes the preliminary brainstorming of several individuals holding various positions within Salk, including a number not serving in faculty or management roles, who were invited to present a wide-range of ideas for early consideration.

“In no way is it equivalent to a strategic plan, which remains in development. It is simply a collection of initial thoughts. …

“Without question, the Salk Institute, in many ways, is now in the best financial and operational position it has ever been. It is entirely inaccurate and irresponsible to suggest otherwise.”

The institute added that it decided not to pursue a short-term endowment campaign, a hospital affiliation, or a name change.

The Salk is charting its future at a moment when its scientific neighbors in La Jolla are rapidly expanding in “translational medicine,” the term for turning discoveries into drugs and therapies.

They’re being driven, in part, by big donors who want scientists to shorten the time it takes to develop treatments for everything from dementia and cancer to diabetes, spinal cord injuries and aging.

The demand has been pressed especially hard by donors like T. Denny Sanford, who gave UC San Diego $100 million in 2013 to speed up the quest to find ways to use stem cells to treat a variety of afflictions.

Sanford said, ”It is time to move stem cell research from animals into humans for trials, especially in areas like ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease) and spinal cord injuries, where I believe we can make a lot of progress.”

Researchers there are doing such things as using smartphones to help determine the severity of cystic fibrosis in patients, and developing devices similar to the medical tri-corder seen in “Star Trek.”

The new building also has enabled UC San Diego to carry out drug trials, which helped the university raise a record $1.12 billion in research funding last year. And it helped the campus recruit such star scientists as Jeremy Rich, a brain tumor specialist who came from the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio.

“A lot of people think that taking an idea or discovery from lab to clinic is simple. It’s not; it’s almost impossibly difficult and exhausting,” said Gary Firestein, the university’s associate vice chancellor of translational medicine.

“The problem isn’t just the science, but also the regulatory maze that stands between scientist and patient,” he added. “Translational medicine was invented to somehow bridge that gap.”

Schultz brought in an affiliate called Calibr to advance research to the clinical trial stage, where therapies are first tested in people. At that point much of the risk in development is gone, and drug companies will pay more to license products.

Earlier this year, Schultz revamped TSRI’s board of directors to include more biomedical and business leaders and wealthy individuals. This high-powered board provides not only more credibility, but has members with money to make large donations themselves.

If Schultz achieves his goals, the institute will greatly speed up its pipeline of therapies from the laboratory bench to the patients’ bedside. That means patients will get new therapies faster — and TSRI will get more money to continue churning out discoveries.

The Salk Institute faces pressure to do likewise, or be left behind. And it clearly sees this as a pivotal moment in its history. The institute summed up the challenge in a document obtained by the Union-Tribune.

A part of the document asks, simply: “How do we make sure Salk is financially prepared to continue to be a leader in biological research?”

The Food and Drug Administration has launched a crackdown on clinics hawking stem cell treatments for a range of ailments. (September 1, 2017) (Sign up for our free video newsletter here http://bit.ly/2n6VKPR)

The Food and Drug Administration has launched a crackdown on clinics hawking stem cell treatments for a range of ailments. (September 1, 2017) (Sign up for our free video newsletter here http://bit.ly/2n6VKPR)

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Researchers used eggs from healthy females and the sperm of a man who carried a gene mutation that causes inherited hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. (Aug. 3, 2017) (Sign up for our free video newsletter here http://bit.ly/2n6VKPR)

Researchers used eggs from healthy females and the sperm of a man who carried a gene mutation that causes inherited hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. (Aug. 3, 2017) (Sign up for our free video newsletter here http://bit.ly/2n6VKPR)